Basic Lightroom workflow

- [Voiceover] If you're using Adobe Photoshop Lightroomto manage your images, you can make useof Lightroom to send images to the various applicationsin the NIK Collection in order to applya variety of different effects.The basic workflow for most of those applicationsin the NIK Collection is essentially the same.Let's take a look at that basic process.First, we'll take a look at some of the settings involved.So I'll go up to the menu bar and on the Lightroom menuon the Macintosh version of Lightroom,or the Edit menu on the Windows version of Lightroom,you'll find the preferences option.

When you select preferences, the preferences dialoguewill come up, of course, and you can choosethe external editing tab in order to adjustthe settings for how images are sent to external editorsand that includes the various applicationsin the NIK Collection.When you install the NIK Collection, it willautomatically configure itself for use in Lightroomand so you really don't need to change anything,but it can be helpful to understandwhat those settings are.Under additional external editor,you'll see we have a list of presets.

I'll click that popup and you can see, for example,that we have Analog Effects Pro, Color Effects Pro,Define, etc.These are all presets that determine how imageswill be sent to the various applicationsin the NIK Collection.For example, you can see that the file being createdis a TIFF image.I could change that to a PSD or a JPEG if I prefer.I can also choose which color space I would like to use.You can see here that the default I set to SRGB.I would prefer to work in either Adobe RGBor Pro Photo RGB since those are larger gamut color spaces.

We'll go ahead and choose Adobe RGB in this case.And then I can specify the bit depth.I always prefer 16-bit per channel whenever possible.So I'll leave this set to the 16-bits per component option.The resolution is really just a convenience setting.The default here, as you can see,is 240 pixel per inch.My personal preference is to set thisto 360 pixel per inch because in most caseswhen I'm outputting an image, when I'm printing an image,I'm doing so to a photo inkjet printerand my photo inkjet printer happens to render dataat 360 pixels per inch and so that's a good valueto establish here and basically just saves mea step later when I need to adjust the resolutionshould that become necessary.

I can also choose compression since I'm savingas a TIFF image.I can choose them on LZW or Zip compressionor, of course, leave the option set to none.I'll go ahead and choose the Zip compression option,which I generally better in terms of reducing file sizewhen it comes to 16-bit per channel images.Note that both LZW and Zip compression are losslessmeaning that they will not reduce the quality of your image.I also want to tack any of these derivative imagesthat I might create when using an external editorwith the original image.

So, as I create an image in Analog Effects Pro, for example,the TIFF image that I'm creating will be stackedwith my original raw capture, which makes ita little bit easier to find the imagethat I'm looking for later.So, I've made some changes to the Analog Effects Propreset here.I might want to change the settingsfor other presets as well.I'll go ahead in this case though and save the updates.So I'll click the preset popup and then down at the bottomyou'll find Update Present, and that will saveall of the updates to the settings I have just madeas part of that preset.

So basically resaving the preset with the same name,but updated settings.You may want to review the various settingsfor the presets you'll use for external editingto make sure that the setting are as you prefer them.I'll go ahead and close the preferences dialogueand we'll take a brief aside here to take a lookat an exception in terms of the basic workflow processand that relates to HDR Effects Pro.If you're assembling a High Dynamic Range imageusing HDR Effects Pro, you will not be usingthe normal external editor workflow in Lightroom.

Instead, you'll be using an export workflow.The first step I to elect the several imagesthat you want to assemble into an HDR.At the moment, I'm not actually working on an HDR image,so I'll just select to random imagesjust for the same of illustration.And then we can go to the file menuand choose Export with Preset and choosethe specific preset that we want to useto export these images.We could also click the Export buttonat the bottom of the left panel of the library moduleand then choose the appropriate presetfrom the left side of that dialogue.

That would be HDR Effects Pro 2, of course,so that we can export the images to HDR Effect Pro 2.This export process is only applicableto HDR Effects Pro when it comes to the NIK Collection.So it's a little bit of an exceptionrelative to the other applications in the NIK Collection.And jut so that you're familiar, I'll go aheadand click the Export button to bring up the export dialogueand then under Google you'll seethe HDR Effects Pro 2 preset.And so we can choose this very simply from the file menuor you can come in to the export dialogue if you prefer.

But in this case, I'm not going to actually createan HDR image, so I'll go ahead and click the Cancel buttonand then we can take a look at the workflowfor processing an image with the otherplugins for the NIK Collection.In this case, I'll just use Analog Effects Proas my example so that I can applyan older look to an image.So, I've selected the image.If I want to apply so basic adjustments,now is a good time to do that.So with an image selected, I can go to theDevelop module and then over on the right panelin the Develop module I can applywhatever adjustments I'd like.

And so perhaps I want to fine tunethe color temperature just a little bitor I want to fine tune to the overall tonal adjustments,maybe clean up some noise or chromatic aberrations.Whatever the case may be, I can applyall those adjustments now so that they will beapplied for the image that I am processingin Analog Effects Pro or whichever applicationin the Nik Collection I happen to be using.The point being is that we can apply adjustmentsin the Develop module before working with our imagesin the Nik Collection.

So let's assume I've applied whatever adjustments I'd like,now I'm ready to send this image to, in this case,Analog Effects Pro.And so I'll go to the menu and choose Photofollowed by Edit In and then choose the application.In this case, Analog Effects Pro, which ispart of the Nik Collection from Google,that I would like to process this image in.I can choose from any of the available applicationsthat are part of the Nik Collection,I'm just uing Analog Effects Pro to applyan older look for this particular image.

But the point is that we can decidewhich of the applications in the Nik Collectionwe want to use and then choosethe preset for that application from the Edit In submenu.So, I'll go ahead and choose Analog Effects Profrom the menu.Lightroom will ask me how I want to process this imageand the only available option is to edit a copywith Lightroom adjustments since it's a raw capture.I'll go ahead and click the Edit buttonand that photo will be processed by Lightroomand sent to Analog Effects Pro.

You might notice as that process is happeningthat a duplicate image has appeared on my film stripthat is the TIFF image that was createdas a derivative based on my original raw capture.Once the image I opened in Analog Effects Pro,I can, of course, make use of all the featureswithin Analog Effects Pro in order toapply changes in appearance to my photo.The settings I have established here lookkind of interesting for this photoso we'll call that good enough.And then when I'm finished, I can simply save the result.

So I might choose a different preset over on the left panelor apply a variety of different changes to the settingsover on the right panel.For now, we'll just leave these settings as they areand I'll finish the process here by clicking the Save buttondown at the bottom right of the Analog Effects Pro dialogue.That image will be processed then.All of the settings will be finalizedfor the derivative image.Again, that TIFF image that I'm creatingas part of this process.As soon as processing is complete,you can see that the resulting image,a TIFF image, is not included in my Lightroom catalogright next to the original, raw capture that I usedas the basis of that adjustment.

You'll notice that we have an indication oftwo of two on the original raw imageand if I mouse over the TIFF image we created,you'll see one of two there.That's an indication that those images are in a stack.I can click that little banner in order tocollapse the stack so that for all intents and purposesit's like I only have one imagerepresenting this particular photo.Of course, there are two, my original rawplus the derivative TIFF imageand I can expand the stack at any time.But, presumably, I apply this adjustmentto create what I consider to bethe final version of the imageand so I may not need to have access to the original raw.

Or at least in most cases, I might not need to have accessto the raw capture and so this can be very convenientboth in terms of being able to findthe original raw or the derivative TIFF image very easily,but perhaps more importantly, being able to consolidatethose images to help keep my film strip displaya little bit more tidy.At this point, of course, I can continuemanaging this derivative image within my Lightroom catalog.I can apply fine tuning adjustmentsin the Develop module if I'd likeand of course, I can share this imagein a wide variety of ways using the optionsthat are available in Lightroom.

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Released

6/6/2014

Learn the basic techniques for working with the affordable, easy-to-use Nik Collection, a group of photo enhancement plugins from Google. This course provides a great way to get up to speed quickly with the full Nik Collection, including workflows for integrating the plugins with your Lightroom and Photoshop workflows. Tim Grey touches on interface options, presets, loupe and histogram behavior, preview options, and other features that are common to all the programs in the collection: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro 2, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, Viveza, and Dfine.

This course was created by Tim Grey. We are honored to host this training in our library.